An ever-growing number of applications, including data-intensive applications, are being rearchitected for, and being built on, container architectures. A study by Fortune Business Insights estimated the global market for containers and Kubernetes to be $5.2 billion by the end of 2023, representing a CAGR of over 37.0% between 2018 and 2023.
Clearly, for today’s enterprise, if containers are not a part of the present, they are a part of the near-term future. This means that they need to be protected, just like their physical and virtual counterparts. However, they do have a number of unique considerations beyond traditional data protection requirements that need to be factored in.
Firstly, the shift to container architectures drives a shift from few large scale-up databases to multiple scale-out databases – making centralized oversight and protection by IT more difficult. At the same time, protection must happen in a way that does not impede the agility of DevOps teams when developing and updating software. Backups must happen in an automated and seamless way, and DevOps teams do not have time to wait for IT if they need to roll an application back to a previous point in time.
Another challenge facing IT operations is that while Kubernetes is established as the most popular container orchestration tool, the Kubernetes distribution, management and storage ecosystems are inconsistent and very much still maturing. Enterprises can choose from a variety of open-source and vendor-specific implementations, making it difficult to be definitive about data protection requirements.
Enterprises are taking a variety of approaches to working with Kubernetes. Some are using PaaS platforms that support Kubernetes, such as Red Hat OpenShift, or they are retrofitting PaaS platforms on Kubernetes, such as CloudFoundry, which does not yet support Kubernetes natively. Cloud-based Kubernetes services such as AWS Kubernetes Service (EKS), Microsoft Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS), and Google Kubernetes Service (GKE) are also being adopted. Meanwhile, other enterprises still are using the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ecosystem itself to build their own.
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Author Information
Krista Case brings over 15 years of experience providing research and advisory services and creating thought leadership content. Her vantage point spans technology and vendor portfolio developments; customer buying behavior trends; and vendor ecosystems, go-to-market positioning, and business models. Her work has appeared in major publications including eWeek, TechTarget and The Register.
